What Does Dr. Blumenthal Think?

Want to know what President Obama’s National Coordinator for Health Information Technology thinks and how what he envisions will affect you and your practice? Check out this interview in Health IT News.

7 Responses to “What Does Dr. Blumenthal Think?”

I live in WV and 70% of our patients are covered under the state medicaid program. We have patients coming into our inferility clinic and paying cash to get pregnant just to be covered by medicaid for maternity. They come in for preconception counseling so they can get pregnant. Patients that are not approved by medicaid are expected to pay in full at time of service. The patient can apply for a financial write off with the hospital. This is a substantual write off for the hospital and providers office.

You will always have patients that will be non compliant and will be the reason for problems with health care reform. We have trouble just making the patient apply for medicaid when they are pregnant.

Isn’t this just another step toward “Big Brother” taking over the health care industry? With the possibility of socialized medicine in this country, I am very skeptical of the abuse of personal medical information. When state/federal employees have access to this information (as was the case in Ohio when “Joe the Plumber’s” personal information was exposed by a ranking, state employee for asking the President a question), how can we the public be assured that this private information will not be used against us?

Are we supposed to trust our government when they tell us EMR’s will be safe, secure and private, because of HIPPA? – the same government who recently, through the Dept of Homeland Security, “accidentally” released the location of our nuclear weapons storage facilities to the world? When is the American Public going to wake-up to what is happening? Yes, Paul, “1984” is here. We’re told we, American citizens, may lose our private insurance or pay a ‘lot more’ for it. I don’t hear anyone talking about how our caring, generous country takes care of the rest of the world; or how because of this we who were born here and have paid into the SS system our entire lives may pay more for our healthcare in order to continue to take care of everyone else whether citizens, or not; whether they are willing to participate in the working world, or not. We give the same access to our “broken healthcare system” for a green card holder who doesn’t speak English, has never worked a day in this country, not paid a dime into SS and for whom we, the medical provider, must hire an interpreter at our expense, as my 81yo father (a man who fought in WWII and has worked and paid into SS every day of his adult life) and who just had a quadruple bypass – but legally earned the Medicare coverage and pays monthly for the BCBS supplement that paid the bill for the services rendered to save his life and give him a better quality of life. There is something seriously wrong with this picture! Are we going to allow socialism to replace our American freedoms?

Someone, perferably our Congress, needs to read ALL of the health care proposal. I don’t feel it’s about health care, it’s about control. It’s very scary. Have you noticed, people from the US don’t go to Canada or Europe for health care, those people, that can afford it, come to us! Let’s not let go of our freedom to choose so easily to someone who has a way with words to make everything sound so rosy.